Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Was Never Nora
Dominic dismissed everyone except Nora.
Even Vivien's protests disappeared down the corridor as Leo and Matteo took her toward the basement.
Beatrice closed the drawing-room doors.
Dominic remained near them.
Nora stood beside the shattered coffee table.
Neither spoke.
Rain tapped against the windows.
Finally Dominic removed his wet jacket.
He placed it carefully over the back of a chair.
The controlled gesture was more threatening than shouting would have been.
"Start talking."
Nora looked at him.
"About which part?"
"Your name."
Silence.
Dominic stepped closer.
"You've slept beside me for eleven months."
"I know."
"You live in my house."
"I know."
"I put guards around you because I thought you couldn't protect yourself."
A faint expression almost resembling amusement crossed her face.
"That part was unnecessary."
Dominic looked at the wreckage.
"Clearly."
He stopped several feet away.
"What is your name?"
Nora's eyes lowered.
"Elena Moretti."
Dominic felt the name strike somewhere deep in his memory.
Moretti.
He knew it.
Then he remembered.
Sixteen years earlier, the Moretti family had controlled a narrow but profitable corridor between New York and northern New Jersey.
Until someone destroyed them.
Their warehouses burned.
Their accounts vanished.
Their senior men disappeared.
And Salvatore Moretti, the head of the family, was found dead inside a car near the Hudson.
Dominic stared at her.
"Salvatore Moretti."
"My father."
The room seemed colder.
"You're supposed to be dead."
"So I've been told."
"The reports said his wife and daughter died in a house fire."
"My mother did."
Nora—Elena—looked toward the fireplace.
"I didn't."
Dominic's mind raced.
"Arthur Castellano."
Her jaw tightened.
"What about him?"
"He was involved."
Elena gave him a long look.
"More than involved."
She walked to the broken window.
"Arthur ordered my father's murder."
Dominic said nothing.
"He wanted our territory. My father refused to sell. Arthur convinced three of our captains to betray him."
Her voice remained steady.
"The night my father died, men came to our house."
Dominic watched her reflection in the rain-dark glass.
"My mother hid me inside a service passage behind the library. She told me not to make a sound."
For the first time, Elena's voice trembled.
"I listened while they killed everyone downstairs."
Dominic felt something inside him tighten.
"I stayed inside that wall for eleven hours."
She turned.
"I was thirteen."
Dominic finally understood the contradiction he had never noticed.
Nora disliked shouting.
Nora flinched at sudden noises.
Yet sometimes, when one of Dominic's armed men entered unexpectedly, her eyes did not move toward the man's face.
They moved toward his hands.
She had never been helpless.
She had been trained by fear.
"How did you survive afterward?"
"Someone found me."
"Who?"
Elena hesitated.
That hesitation mattered.
"Beatrice."
Dominic's eyes sharpened.
"What?"
The drawing-room door opened before he could move.
Beatrice stood there.
She had heard enough.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Gallo."
Dominic stared at the woman who had worked inside his family's homes since he was eighteen.
"You knew?"
"Yes."
"From the beginning?"
"Yes."
His voice dropped.
"How long?"
Beatrice looked at Elena.
"Sixteen years."
Dominic almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because the alternative was rage.
"You hid the daughter of Salvatore Moretti for sixteen years?"
"I protected a child."
"From whom?"
Beatrice's eyes hardened.
"From men like Arthur Castellano."
Dominic absorbed the rebuke.
"And eventually from men like me?"
Beatrice did not answer.
She did not need to.
Elena stepped between them.
"Don't blame her."
Dominic turned.
"I decide who I blame."
"No."
Elena's voice sharpened.
"That's exactly the problem. You're used to deciding everything."
Dominic approached.
"And you entered my life under a false name."
"Yes."
"Why?"
Elena said nothing.
That frightened him more than the confession.
"Was I part of a plan?"
"No."
"Don't lie again."
"I'm not."
Dominic searched her face.
"Then why me?"
"Because you walked into my restoration studio with a damaged Caravaggio study and treated me like I was a person instead of something useful."
Dominic remembered.
A rainy Thursday.
A small restoration studio smelling of varnish and old canvas.
Nora had been standing beneath bright work lights with paint on her cheek.
He had asked whether the painting could be saved.
She had looked at the cracked surface and said, "Most things can, if someone hasn't tried too hard to destroy them."
He had returned three days later without needing to.
Then again.
"You knew who I was."
"Of course."
"And still let me come back."
"I thought you might lead me to Arthur."
There it was.
Dominic's face became expressionless.
"So I was part of a plan."
"At first."
The words hurt more than he expected.
"And afterward?"
Elena looked at him.
"Afterward you became the reason I stopped caring about the plan."
Dominic wanted to believe her.
That was precisely why he couldn't.
A knock interrupted them.
Leo entered.
"Boss."
"What?"
"Vivien wants to talk."
"She can wait."
"She says it's about Arthur."
Dominic turned.
"What about him?"
Leo hesitated.
"She says her father knows Nora is Elena Moretti."
Elena's face drained of color.
Dominic noticed.
"How?"
Leo shook his head.
"She won't say unless you come downstairs."
Dominic looked at Elena.
"You stay here."
"No."
"That wasn't a request."
"Then you can waste your breath."
She walked toward the door.
Dominic caught her wrist.
Instinctively, Elena moved.
Fast.
Her hand twisted beneath his.
Her shoulder turned.
For half a second, Dominic nearly lost his balance.
Then both stopped.
They stared at each other.
Dominic slowly released her.
"Where did you learn that?"
"My father believed daughters should know how to survive."
They went downstairs together.
Vivien sat in a chair in the basement wine cellar.
Her wrists were secured in front of her.
A doctor had treated her nose.
When Elena entered, Vivien shrank backward.
Dominic saw it.
"Talk."
Vivien looked at him.
"You think she accidentally met you?"
Dominic remained silent.
"Arthur has known she was alive for months."
Elena stepped forward.
"How?"
Vivien smiled nervously.
"Because someone inside this house told him."
Dominic's expression hardened.
"Name."
"I don't know."
"Then you're useless."
Vivien laughed.
"Am I?"
She looked at Elena.
"Tell him why I came here."
"You came because you're obsessed with him."
"Partly."
Vivien's smile disappeared.
"But mostly because my father told me to."
Dominic's eyes narrowed.
"He wanted you to attack Nora?"
"No."
Vivien looked directly at Elena.
"He wanted me to scare her into leaving."
"Why?"
"Because Arthur doesn't want Elena dead anymore."
That made no sense.
Elena seemed equally confused.
Vivien leaned forward.
"He needs her."
"For what?"
Vivien's voice became quiet.
"Your father didn't die because of territory, Elena."
Elena stopped breathing.
"He died because he found something."
"What?"
"A ledger."
Dominic knew immediately what she meant.
Not a financial ledger.
A record.
Names.
Payments.
Judges.
Police commanders.
Politicians.
Businesses.
A document capable of destroying entire organizations.
Vivien continued.
"Salvatore hid it before Arthur's men reached him."
Elena stared at her.
"My father never told me about any ledger."
"No. But Arthur thinks your mother did."
"My mother died that night."
"Exactly."
Vivien's eyes moved toward Dominic.
"Arthur has spent sixteen years looking for it."
Dominic suddenly understood.
"And he believes Elena knows where it is."
Vivien nodded.
"But she doesn't," Dominic said.
Vivien smiled.
"Maybe not consciously."
Elena frowned.
"What does that mean?"
Vivien leaned back.
"Your father knew children remember strange things."
Her eyes glittered.
"He hid the location inside something only you would understand."
Elena went still.
"What?"
"A painting."
Dominic turned toward her.
Elena's face had changed.
"Which painting?"
Vivien smiled.
"The one Beatrice saved from your childhood home."
Everyone looked toward Beatrice.
The older woman went pale.
Dominic spoke first.
"What painting?"
Beatrice's hands began trembling again.
"There was one thing I took when I found Elena."
"What?"
"A small painting her mother kept in the library."
Elena whispered, "The garden."
Beatrice nodded.
Elena looked suddenly shaken.
A painting of a garden had hung above the fireplace throughout her childhood.
Her mother used to tell her that if she ever became frightened, she should look for the place where the roses never died.
Dominic saw recognition spread across Elena's face.
"Where is it now?"
Beatrice swallowed.
"In the attic."
Dominic ordered Leo to bring it down.
Ten minutes later, Leo returned carrying a dusty canvas wrapped in linen.
Elena removed the covering.
An old garden appeared beneath it.
Stone fountain.
White house.
Rose bushes.
A little girl standing beneath a tree.
Elena touched the canvas.
"My mother painted this."
Dominic examined it.
Nothing unusual.
Then Elena turned it over.
On the wooden frame was a faded inscription.
She read it aloud.
"When the wolves enter the house, follow the roses home."
Beneath the sentence were six numbers.
Dominic recognized them immediately.
Coordinates.
Leo entered at that exact moment holding his phone.
"Boss."
Dominic looked up.
"What now?"
Leo's face was grim.
"We have movement outside the estate."
"Police?"
"No."
"Arthur?"
Leo nodded.
"At least six vehicles."
Dominic reached for his weapon.
Then Leo said something that changed everything.
"They're not approaching the gate."
"Where are they going?"
Leo looked at the coordinates written behind the painting.
"I checked those numbers."
A beat.
"They lead to the old Moretti estate."
Elena stared at him.
The house where her family had died sixteen years earlier.
May you like
And Arthur Castellano's men were already on their way there.
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